Monthly Archives: May 2016

This post is by Danny McMillan, a London-based Amazon Seller who sells in Europe and the US. Danny has previously worked in the music industry and with tech start-ups. He is now a public speaker and regularly co-presents at the UK’s largest Meetup group for Amazon sellers on subjects including PPC and conversion optimization.

The Canton Fair is a great place to choose for your first product sourcing mission. But to get the most out of the experience, you have to properly prepare for your visit. That can take a lot time when you are learning everything from scratch. I hope that this article will slash your prep time and save you some of the pain my business partner and I went through on our first visit.

During my first Canton Fair, I actually over-planned and as a result, most of my plans did not pan out as expected. However, it was still an amazing experience and we learned some valuable lessons along the way.

Here are just a few of the things I wish I had been told pre-Canton. I’ve also included some great tips from six Amazon experts I met along the way: Will Tjernlund, Michael Michelini, Chris Davey, Manuel Becvar, Ashley Thompson, Ashish Monga and Greg Mercer.

This post is by Jonathan Pollard, CEO of eBay integration software company Codisto. Their products include Xpress Lister, a free eBay listing creation tool for spreadsheets, and Marketplace Connect, which provides full eBay catalog synchronization for Magento and WooCommerce.

eBay sellers generated $80 billion of revenue last year, from 17 million buyers who show up on the marketplace every month. For sellers, eBay is an incredible opportunity too good to miss.

But tackling eBay selling at scale can be a real challenge. Strategies and tools are needed to overcome the scaling difficulties. These will set yourself apart from competitors and allow you to make the most of the lucrative eBay marketplace. Let’s take a look at what’s involved.

This post is by Gary Huang, an American based in Shanghai, China. Gary has been working in sourcing since 2008, and is the creator of 80/20 Sourcing which teaches online sellers and small business importers how to save time and make more money when sourcing from suppliers in China.

Recently I listened to an interesting podcast from Scott Voelker aka The Amazing Seller. He shared a story about a quality problem with one of his Amazon products which led to a listing suspension.

The problem was with a bundled product. Apparently some of the products had missing pieces and customers were returning them. Amazon noticed the unusually high return rate so they suspended his listing!

This meant all his sales stopped on this listing. Scott was smart to take action and file for a removal order to take back the defective inventory. Obviously he wasn’t going to ship them back to China (too expensive and time consuming) so he decided to fix them himself. Meanwhile he switched the listing from FBA to merchant-fulfilled to start selling the product again.

But in the process he lost a ton of sales from the time the listing was down to when he fixed the problem and shipped them back to Amazon. And he had to spend his own time and hard-earned money to fix the problem. What can we learn from this? What could Scott have done to prevent this nightmare?

You take your first few sips of freshly brewed coffee as you sit in front of the computer to review your Amazon performance from the day before. You look at your daily sales on one product… up 15%.

You look at the next product and instead of your smile getting bigger, your mouth drops open and a sinking feeling prevails as you notice that you’ve lost the Buy Box and your sales have bottomed out. You immediately realize your listing has been hijacked!

But as your business grows, it gets more and more complex. There will be unexpected spikes in order volume. You have to manage staff and perhaps juggle multiple carriers. You will certainly need to create and continually improve processes which keep everything running efficiently and accurately. If you want to ship overseas, that’s yet another level of complexity.

But shipping is not just complex, it’s expensive. Even while fuel prices fall, shipping rates still go up every year. UPS and FedEx raised their rates by around 5% this year. Online sellers either have to absorb the costs or pass it on to their customers – which can impact sales.

So in this article, I wanted to find out if it was possible to save money on shipping without adding any more complexity, and without downgrading the service offered to buyers.

After a lot of research, I’ve discovered three ways to do exactly that.

In this article I’ll say what those approaches are, and highlight some companies that provide tools or services in those areas. Then I’ll explain how they work and how much they cost. If you have any questions, fire away in the comments at the end.